$100,000 / (50 weeks * 40 hours) => ~$50 per hour.
Extremely conservatively, if this saves a developer ~30 minutes per day, it pays for itself. If you spent $100 per day, it would still be worth it.
And when it sends the same developer down a rabbit hole of "something weird is going on" for a couple days (using your math - 2 x 8 * $50 / hr = $800), does it still pay for itself?
If you lose 8 hrs to weirdness, but save 10 hrs somewhere else, then yeah it does pay for itself.
My argument is that it doesn't need to improve overall productivity much to have positive ROI. Whether you agree that these tools improve productivity or not is another question.
> My argument is that it doesn't need to improve overall productivity much to have positive ROI.
That makes sense.
Problem is, there exists a paradox when relying upon LLM's to make software solutions:
People use them to "save time."
Saving time by outsourcing understanding to LLM's
circumvents learning.
Without learning, the tool becomes a crutch.
When the crutch breaks, there is nothing behind it to fall
back onto.